Peaches Geldof's best friend pens heart-rending essay on sisterhood and life after grief

Peaches Geldof's best friend has penned a beautiful essay about their friendship and her grief after Peaches' death.

Lily Gutierrez and Geldof met as young girls, moved from London to New York together, and got married a week apart. In the piece for Motherland magazine, Gutierrez wrote:

"I used to have a friend who was a firework of a girl, so brilliant, daring and bright that being near her I often felt I was holding my breath, waiting for her next vivid explosion. She was a wild, rare thing, always creating chaos. Her imagination was huge and she told fantastic tales – she was my favourite liar.

"Two years ago, my dear friend died, but still she visits me in my dreams. Often as bossy and rude as in life, but always hypnotic. Her visits are fleeting, but she always remembers to kiss me on the lips."

Peaches with her husband, musician Thomas Cohen

Geldof died in April 2014, aged 25, after an accidental heroin overdose. Her body was found at the Kent home she shared with her husband, musician Thomas Cohen, and their two sons Astala and Phaedra.

Gutierrez, who was maid of honour at Geldof and Cohen's wedding in 2012, read a eulogy at her funeral. Both the wedding and the funeral were held at the Kent church where Geldof's parents, Bob Geldof and Paula Yates, were married, and where her mother's funeral was held. Yates also died from a heroin overdose in 2000, when Geldof was 11.

On hearing the news of her best friend's death, Gutierrez wrote: "I fell on the floor screaming, my body was in so much pain. I kept having to change my clothes as they became soaked with sweat... My grief came in unstoppable waves and disconnected me from everyone. A live thing, like a bear inside me, it came out when it wanted and terrified me. I had no control over it. I didn’t speak about it because I was scared this bear had the power to swallow the person I was talking to whole."

Gutierrez described Geldof as a "precocious teen queen", and said that "meeting Peaches changed the trajectory of my life"

Gutierrez wrote that Geldof "never worried about being polite. She had a childlike curiosity that walked a thin line between insult and charm. I lived with her for years but I don’t think she ever knew where I was going when I left for work in the mornings.

"She was completely unconcerned by surface things, things other people used to define themselves. She had a special power that allowed her to get right to the core of a person, to find their deepest secrets, their shadow selves, their most tender and very best parts. And she’d discard the rest, the boring bits, the job titles and such."

She added that the thing she missed most about her best friend, "above her quick wit and spark, above her ability to mesmerise, is her heart. I miss the heart that she often tried to keep hidden, anyone who caught a glimpse of it knew it was gigantic. She loved so much. Sometimes silently. Her tenderness was found in strange places, silly dances and cartoon drawings, and now a kiss on the lips in the privacy of a dream.

"How lucky am I that this friend of mine, that I hold in such high esteem, returned my love. That thought alone will always make me smile."